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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22798852">The Human Condition and The Mind Games Places Play on Us</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheStrawberryQueen/pseuds/TheStrawberryQueen'>TheStrawberryQueen</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Compilation of Final Fantasy VII</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen, I hate writing in first person but fuck it I'm keeping it because I was told to write it like that, Nibelheim (Compilation of FFVII), POV First Person, The tag original child characters is technically a lie because they're teenagers</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 18:41:38</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22798852</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheStrawberryQueen/pseuds/TheStrawberryQueen</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Nibel.<br/>The tall, immeasurable mountain range that housed the town of Nibelheim. Hell to most, home to others.</p><p>Also, a very terrible place for a bunch of teenagers to explore on their own.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Human Condition and The Mind Games Places Play on Us</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>So! Context: I wrote this in senior year of high school (so about a year ago) as an English assignment. Some of it has been untouched other than me going back and editing it and rewriting a good chunk of it for my own sanity's sake. Would you believe me when I say that this was supposed to be a short horror story?</p><p>This is technically my first full fic here, and I don't know if I'll expand on this concept or not. It's 100% unbetaed, so I apologize for any mistakes!</p><p>Also! The original characters are fan kids! Feel free to give a guess as to who their parents are!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Nibel.</p><p>The tall, immeasurable mountain range that housed the mostly destroyed, abandoned town of Nibelheim. Hell to most, home to others. But to my family, well, to my parents at least, the town held bad memories. It had burned down when they were both teenagers, though Mama remembers the incident a lot better than Dad does because he had repressed most of those memories due to many reasons, some he really doesn’t like to talk about.</p><p>But, somehow I found myself standing in that town, with a few close friends. I don’t remember the ride up, but I distinctly remember the acidic taste in the back of my throat and a hand on my back, rubbing in soft circles as I clutched a bucket close to my chest. That’s the one thing that I hated that I got from my Dad, his motion sickness. Regardless of that, we had arrived in the abandoned town, ready to explore and see what was left standing to go through. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched as Fen, a girl with unruly chestnut brown hair and stormy blue eyes, lifted her phone up above her, testing to see if the reception was solid. As expected, the reception was pretty spotty, being up in the mountains and basically being the middle of nowhere. If our fathers wanted to chew us out, it’d have to wait until we were out of the Nibel Mountain Range.</p><p>“Alright. Now that we’re here, we’ve got to pick who’s exploring the mansion!” Ruby, a girl with long champagne blonde hair tied up into a bun, and forget-me-not blue eyes, perked up, eyes gleaming with excitement. Her orange poncho bounced as she did.</p><p>It was inevitable, I guess, judging from Fen’s tired sigh and Chiku, a young man with fawn brown hair and almond-shaped eyes that were both steel blue and jasper green, had a look that made it clear that he just wanted to get it over with. I sympathized with them, honestly. I couldn’t imagine having to put up with Ruby and her overwhelming bubbly energy all of the time.</p><p>“And how do you suppose we go about that, Rubes?” Chiku interjects before I even have the chance to ask, only to be met with the smaller girl’s smirk and the glint of mischief that sparkled in her eyes. It’s then that I notice that Chiku’s normally calm, yet shy demeanor is slightly more on edge than normal, curling one of his pinky fingers inwards to say that he was fine, but that something about the situation disturbed him. I don’t blame him, as I’m nervously fiddling with the ends of my honey blonde hair. </p><p>I don’t know how Fen is keeping calm in this scenario, surrounded by the scene that was once a village, with most of it being ash upon the ground and small overgrowth on whatever else was still left standing.</p><p>“That’s easy, Chiky-Poo! Rock, paper, scissors! Duh!” A girlish giggle followed that sentence, and something in my gut told me that it was going to fall on me.</p>
<hr/><p>I was right. I hated when I was right.</p><p>I lost the 4 man rock, paper, scissors fight, with unfortunate scissors against three rocks and was immediately pushed towards the mansion’s door. A bright red flashlight was shoved into my hand, before leaving me in front of the quiet building. Looking at the building, it seemed like it could have been a rich man’s home, tall and impressive in size and made of what I think was either marble or an offshoot of marble. It was nestled in a corner of the mountain that was chipped away, Mama told me it might have been originally chipped away to make away for a pathway through it, but Nibelheim never went through with the plan. Anyways, the mansion was protected by a tall stone wall, with a rusted gate acting as an entrance to the impressive building.</p><p>A distant but cheery “Good luck Eira!” echoed from behind the gate, most likely from Ruby. I roll my eyes, gee thanks for telling that. Totally puts my nerves at ease. (Spoiler, it doesn’t.) With a harsh gulp, I push the heavy, dark oak doors open.</p><p>As I stepped inside, the smell of must and stagnant air hit me hard. The large front room had two side rooms, each with their respective furniture. I also noticed that light from outside was trailing inside, highlighting the dust floating around. But, the center of the room had a set of stairs that led in two different directions. My stomach felt like it was tied into tight knots as I ascended to the right. As I stopped at the top of the stairway, I felt a soft tug on my hair. I turned around, hoping to see someone behind me but there was no one. I shrug it off, maybe my mind is playing tricks on me and my nerves are making me feel things that aren’t really there. From what I could tell, there were two rooms, once again. I walked to the room that was farthest away from me, just to check it out. All I found was two chairs by a window, a few boxes with a variety of things scattered in them, with no rhyme or reason. The only thing that seemed interesting to me was a desk that, despite looking like any old wooden desk, was riddled with black ink splotches, along with scribbling that seemed like words, but it was either written in chicken scratch or was in some language I didn’t know. My money is on the chicken scratch. There was one other thing too; claw marks were littering the legs, sides, and opening of the desk.</p><p>I had to step back, okay, definitely strange. Way too strange for my taste. My stomach was starting to feel heavy as if I had swallowed lead. Walking out of the room and into the hallway, I made my way into the room to the right. The first thing I noticed upon entering the room is the painting on the wall to my right. It had a woman with light brown hair and brown eyes, I think, along with a soft smile that seemed to be directed towards a white cloth. I want to say it probably a baby within the cloth, but I couldn’t be sure. It felt… familiar, but not in a good way. The longer I looked at it, the more I want to leave, to go into another room. And so, with a final look at the painting, I walk towards the next room. </p><p>A large bed sat in the corner of the room, along with a bookcase and a large stone wall. Finally, a room to hopefully calm myself, and maybe sleep if I’m lucky. But this room is making even more on edge, and I’m not even sure why. Maybe it’s the stone wall that seemed to be out of place amongst the normal decor around me. My gut is telling me that I need to investigate it, and so I do. Tracing my hand along the cool stone, I was hoping to feel something that didn’t seem right, like a button or a rift in the stone to signify a door or something. Anticlimactically, I find nothing of interest, just a normal stone wall. In frustration, I hit the wall hard, hurting my elbow in the process. That wasn’t my brightest moment, but it did reveal a hidden doorway that had rickety old oak steps leading down to whatever was down there. I suck in a breath, turn my flashlight on, and force myself down those old steps.</p><p>The steps as I walked down them creaked as if they hadn’t been used in years. The flashlight came in handy, as this basement-like area was dark and full of potholes, so being careful was my main priority. Looking up, I saw something barely glint and shining my flashlight up revealed tons of rusted chains, either hanging in bunches or loosely and near my head. (I can kind of recall Mama or Dad telling me that this is the place they found Vincent at.)</p><p>Okay, yeah, that definitely is setting off some warning bells in my head. But I kept on going ahead, and ahead was full of cave walls, barrels, and boxes until I found something that caught me off guard; something that looked like it once was a laboratory or was similar to that.</p><p>I attempted to tread as quietly as I could, looking at the walls of bookshelves all around me. There were probably more if I looked a bit, but those weren’t my initial interest. What did though, was the glass on the ground that crunched under my boots as I stepped on it, and the tubes they came from. Scratch marks littered both, some being messages between two people and some looking like a desperate person or animal trying to escape, though there were fewer scratches on one tube than the other. The smell finally hit me around here, it was rancid, reminding me of a strange mix of gasoline and nail polish remover. It was starting to make me feel nauseous, so backing away from the tubes was probably a good idea. As I wandered around the room, I found a bland-looking curtain, it was dark navy and seemed to match with anything in the dark, but stuck out as soon as I shined my flashlight over it.</p><p>
  <em> “Child…” </em>
</p><p>A soft, yet cold female voice whispered in my ear. That made me jump, looking around for the source of the voice, but seeing as I was alone, I chose to brush it off. </p><p>I plodded over to the curtain, curiosity getting the better of me. As I was close, I heard that voice again, but it was louder and more demanding than before. Wincing at the volume, I pull the curtain back, and I regret even doing it in the first place.</p><p>What I saw was, what I want to believe was, some kind of humanoid or human-looking thing that was suspended in an acidic green liquid. I could make out short hair, and eye that seemed to be closed, but the longer I looked, the more it seemed that its eyes were opening and that they were staring at me. When it did open its eyes, it looked like a sickly green and were openly wild-looking, like a caged animal, catching me off guard and making me stumble, falling flat on my butt. It starts to thrash, aggressively, as if wanting to break out.</p><p>Everything was screaming at me to leave, to run away from the danger and save myself. And that I do, staggering to my feet before whatever the hell that was broke out and went after me. Finally, on my feet, I book it back towards the hallway, to the stairs, and to the room above all of that. I need to breathe, I need to calm myself down, and the bed, whilst still near the stone wall, was better than being down there, seems to be inviting me to attempt to calm down there. But no rest for the wicked, I guess, because I notice the green eyes from out of the corner of my eye, bringing a brief yelp out of me.</p><p>The voice came back again, seemingly screaming in my ear and my head. Between the voice and whatever the hell was down behind the stone wall, I felt like I was about to burst.</p><p>In a moment's reprieve, I was able to catch my breath, hearing my heart pound loudly in my ears. Sleep felt like a luxury that I definitely needed, and thus before laying down, I attempted to barricade the wall to the best of my ability as a 16-year-old. After that, I finally decided to drift off for a bit.</p>
<hr/><p>I feel like my dream was trying to warn me that something was most definitely lingering in the mansion, something that I didn’t want to stick around to meet.</p><p>It starts off with my parents visiting their hometown for the first since they were teenagers. I was very little at the time, I think. It’s still a bit hazy on the details leading up to whatever happened, but something in Dad decided to snap when we were near this very same mansion. He was covering his ears and was on the ground, shaking in pain. I ran over to him, not hearing Mama’s voice yelling at me to come back and that it was too dangerous. Little me didn’t hear her at all, asking Dad what was wrong and patting his head to get his attention. That’s when I regret doing that. Dad looks up at me, his eyes were all wrong, they were that same sickly jade that I saw in the tube. It was like I was looking at someone I didn’t know.</p><p>Mama came running over to me, pulling me away from Dad. I didn’t understand, I didn’t. Dad started to mumble about something, before standing up with a posture I’ve never seen him use, it was rigid and commanding. Mama’s eyes widen and held me close, shouting something at him. There seemed to be a silhouette over and behind him, one I couldn’t make out too well. But the silhouette was reached out, overshadowing him and reaching towards Mama and me. It reached out towards me, as I quickly squeezed my eyes shut and screamed. </p><p>That’s what woke me up.</p>
<hr/><p>I woke up in a cold sweat, with those green eyes staring down at me. A panicked scream rang out, as the thing disappeared, my heart racing and I feel my breath becoming shorter. I needed to leave, immediately. I feel like I’m gonna go insane if something else pops up, or whispers in my ears and head. </p><p>I force myself to get up off of the bed, and as I do, the scenery seemed to change slightly, there were more claw marks all over the room than I’d like. The overwhelming scent of smoke from somewhere outside was funneling in, forcing me to cover my mouth and nose. Either there was a fire nearby, someone was trying to smoke me out, or my brain is making the association that I’ve always had with Nibelheim.</p><p>It was at this point that I had decided to make a break for it, putting as much distance between me and this room. Leaving the room and hallway proved to be the best idea, and the worst one at the same time. Once I was at the top of the first stairway, I froze. Down below was whatever I had seen downstairs, and it had definitely broken out. <em>Great,</em> <em>absolutely</em> <em>fucking</em> <em>great</em>. I closed my eyes and when I opened them again, it was gone. I took this chance to bolt down the stairs, tripping over my own feet in a panic a few times.</p><p>Before I reached the door, a female figure had caught my eye. She reminded me of someone I vaguely recalled seeing as a child, in the old abandoned church in Edge that Dad used to take me to. She smiled, and it seemed out of place in this hellish home. Well, that was before her face contorted in pain, as the voice screamed out one last time, calling me a “<em>puppet baby </em>”. The figure gave me a final look before shooing me off, an obvious sign to get out of there.</p><p>As I left, there was a soft and comforting voice. “<em> Tell your dad, an old friend says hi. </em>” I nodded, of course, I’d try if I remembered after this whole debacle.</p><p>Finally on the outside, I met back up with Fen, Ruby, and Chiku. I think I looked visibly shaken, as normally stoic Fen’s eyes are giving me a look that screamed concern. Mama and Dad are definitely going to kill me after Ruby decides to open her big mouth and spill to her parents. I honestly didn’t care at the moment, just wanting to high tail it out of Nibelheim and never return.</p>
<hr/><p>When we left the mountain range, all of us were bombarded with messages and calls from our parents, some messages of concern and some demanding to know where we were. I heard Fen groan, knowing that her dad's going to chew her out once she gets back. Chiku and Ruby have similar reactions, but I'm pretty sure Chiku was panicking.</p><p>For me, Mama messaged me a few times, and I got a call from Dad. That's a talk I'm not looking forward to...</p><p>When we got to the base of the mountain and just outside of the forested area, we were greeted by an airship and a really, really pissed off Lucetta Valentine. I can’t look her in the face, the feeling of fear and shame crawling up my spine.</p><p>“Be glad it’s just me and Junior, and not your father, E. FYI, he’s pissed to high heavens, even if he won’t let it show.” I wince at Lucetta’s words. Yeah, I knew that Dad would be majorly upset with me, but I was dragged along since ‘I knew the area because I’ve been there before.’ Just barely, however. It wasn’t even my idea to begin with.</p><p>“I know Uncle K will “scold” me, but he’ll probably also tell me, “Good job, princess. Trying to one-up my own mischief?” Ruby starts to ponder, her face scrunching up the same way I noticed her dad’s does when he’s deliberately trying to lose himself in his thoughts.</p><p>A lot of Ruby's nervous chattering was drowned out by my own dread, and being on the airship did little to quell that, as my stomach kicked up a fuss as we headed back.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>You can thank the Final Heaven Server giving me the courage to put this out there.</p><p>Here's a <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-QOEuUugfS7YpE3ccWQ-Y_T3hz7iY37RhYBqHl49GjI/edit?usp=sharing">link</a> to the original that's been slightly edited, but remains pretty much the same as it did when I turned it in.</p><p>I'll try to work on a follow-up chapter, but I have no clue when it'll be up.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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